A common idea about assessing meaning in life is that one draws up a list of those various positive values that one has achieved and subtracts from it one's negative deeds in life. The resulting balance is the meaningfulness of one's existence. I call this the ledger theory. Drawing on the work of Raimond Gaita and Julian Barnes's novel The Sense of an Ending, I argue for a phenomenology of remorse that gives us reason to reject the ledger theory. Even those agents whose lives have been exceptionally meaningful in some respects may remain haunted by their past. Certain sorts of misdeeds – those that involve significant, irreparable damage – leave life marred in such a way that the negative remains, even in the face of all the meaningful deeds of life.

关于评估生活意义的一个普遍想法是，人们列出一份清单，列出一个人已经实现的各种积极价值观，并从中减去一个人在生活中的消极行为。由此产生的平衡就是一个人存在的意义。我称之为分类账理论。借鉴 Raimond Gaita 和 Julian Barnes 的小说The Sense of an Ending 的作品，我主张一种悔恨现象学，它让我们有理由拒绝账本理论。即使是那些生活在某些方面特别有意义的代理人，也可能仍然被他们的过去所困扰。某些类型的不当行为——那些涉及重大的、无法弥补的损害——使生活受到损害，即使面对生活中所有有意义的行为，消极的一面依然存在。